Eastern Bloc

The Eastern Bloc is the name given to the countries affiliated with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It not only included the Warsaw Pact and communist states in Eastern Europe, but communist, socialist, or democratic states in other parts of the world such as in Latin America, East Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The Eastern Bloc countries were opposed to the United States-led Western Bloc of capitalist and right-wing countries, although they were not neccessarily all communist; the Dominican Republic was allied with the Eastern Bloc despite being a capitalist nation, and Venezuela was pro-Soviet despite not beeing socialist or communst. The Eastern Bloc also included nations affiliated with both the USSR and China during the Cold War, not just USSR-aligned nations. It fell apart at the end of the era in 1991 as communist states fell all at once.